CPO Blog

I caught up with an old colleague last week and got talking about a project. His user group was using the newly deployed BI and reporting system in an interesting way. They had deployed mostly in an ad-hoc with some built in analytics.

The way he described it was a “Hunch Support System”. Basically the managers were coming up with hunches on how what they needed to do next and then supporting this hunch with an adhoc query to corroborate with the results. In one way it is quite an underuse of the capabilities in the system considering they had implemented full blown BI and Applications, but at least they are using the system. For this group of users, the HSS has become a bridge for them to start using the system.

Hopefully they will move beyond HSS and start using the complete system. I have a hunch they will !

I was recently talking with a relative who works the finance department in the waste management industry, particularly in the portable toilets you see at construction sites, events, etc. We got on the subject of the economy and he had some interesting observations.
Because so much of his business is tied into new construction, he said his business trending became a great leading indicator for the overall economy. He could see from his business trending downward in the individual new construction.
Interesting enough, with the stimulus, we will probably see this leading indicator increase because of the amount of roadwork type of projects.
The economy is full of these anecdotal leading indicators. It would be great to have BI capture and model these at a macro level.

With the stepping down a few weeks ago of Nancy Killefer, the topic of Chief Performance Officer has seemed to vanished from the front page of the newspapers. CPO though, has picked up more steam than ever in the Private sector. Accountability in a commercial organization for all performance seems to have become quite a popular topic.
A great example is Wyndham’s recent press release where Daniel del Olmo as Chief Performance Officer of Wyndham hotels. See press release here. Daniel is taking performance front and center in his organization to navigate through the changing times. It is an affirmation at the CEO level that managing performance is more important than ever and visibility is needed at the C-level of an organization.